A lovely vehicle for sharing nature with children.
The spring salamander migration, the beginning of breeding season, seen through the eyes of a young enthusiast.
Having waited for just the right conditions, a young girl and her mother go out into a rainy evening to search for salamanders attempting to cross busy roads. The story of amphibian migration, when frogs and salamanders leave their winter burrows and return to the wetlands and ponds where they were born to lay eggs for another generation, has been told several times in sweet stories of ecologically conscious children and their parents. In a relatively simple text set out in short lines, the protagonist relates facts about salamanders she has learned from her mother, “the scientist”; her anticipation; and her satisfying experience. The text has the look but not the sound of poetry, with some awkward word choices. But it’s a quiet, patient story, beautifully reflected in Sodano’s paintings, which are done with colored inks, crayon, water-soluble pencils, and digital techniques. These show a black-haired, olive-skinned child and her diverse classmates, salamanders at varying life stages, and the early-spring woodland world near her home. There’s a map showing that spotted salamanders (the species depicted) range broadly down the East Coast and into the Midwest. These excellent illustrations help bring the girl’s expedition to life and add information, too.
A lovely vehicle for sharing nature with children. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990766-4-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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